38 
DARWINISM 
CHAP. 
exercise of the powers and faculties they possess, unmixed 
with any serious dread. There is, in the next place, much 
evidence to show that violent deaths, if not too prolonged, are 
painless and easy; even in the case of man, whose nervous 
system is in all probability much more susceptible to pain than 
that of most animals. In all cases in which persons have 
escaped after being seized by a lion or tiger, they declare 
that they suffered little or no pain, physical or mental. A 
well-known instance is that of Livingstone, who thus describes 
his sensations when seized by a lion : “ Starting and looking 
half round, I saw the lion just in the act of springing on me. 
I was upon a little height; he caught my shoulder as he sprang, 
and we both came to the ground below together. Growling 
horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier-dog does a 
rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which 
seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. 
It causes a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of 
pain or feeling of terror , though I was quite conscious of all 
that was happening. It was like what patients partially 
under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the 
operation, but feel not the knife. This singular condition 
was not the result of any mental process. The shake 
annihilated fear, and allowed no sense of horror in looking 
round at the beast.” 
This absence of pain is not peculiar to those seized by wild 
beasts, but is equally produced by any accident which causes 
a general shock to the system. Mr. Whymper describes an 
accident to himself during one of his preliminary explorations 
of the Matterhorn, when he fell several hundred feet, bounding 
from rock to rock, till fortunately embedded in a snow-drift 
near the edge of a tremendous precipice. He declares that 
while falling and feeling blow after blow, he neither lost 
consciousness nor suffered pain, merely thinking, calmly, that 
a few more blows would finish him. We have therefore a 
right to conclude, that when death follows soon after any 
great shock it is as easy and painless a death as possible ; and 
this is certainly what happens when an animal is seized by a 
beast of prey. For the enemy is one which hunts for food, 
not for pleasure or excitement; and it is doubtful whether any 
carnivorous animal in a state of nature begins to seek after 
